


to love a prophet

by thetalkingcrocus



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gender-Neutral Runner Five, Other, Possibly Unrequited Love, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 17:27:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14501940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetalkingcrocus/pseuds/thetalkingcrocus
Summary: “(s)he saidkiss my knucklesand when I didthe copper taste of blood lingered on my lips”- to love a prophet (r.m.)





	to love a prophet

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to my tumblr September 8 2014. Title comes from a poem of the same name, which can be found here: http://ibuzoo.tumblr.com/post/93407734912. Spoilers up to the end of S2.

“(s)he said

kiss my knuckles

and when I did

the copper taste of blood lingered on my lips”

-[‘to love a prophet’, r.m.](http://ibuzoo.tumblr.com/post/93407734912) 

You have just met her and she runs beside you with a cough catching at her lips and distrust deep in her eyes and she runs hard and fast, almost- but not quite- too fast to keep up to. She pauses to cough into her fist and your lungs twitch in sympathy and you can almost taste copper at the back of your throat: a sense’s empathetic ghost. When you run through the gates together, death at your heels and matching triumphant (manic) grins on your faces, something warms inside of you and you don’t have her trust, but you think she might have yours and that is how it stays, for a while.

********

The ground is cold and her voice is far away, but closer than any other sound. The concussive boom seems years ago but it has still left you shaken, confused. She grips your forearm- like ancient warriors in movies, like a solemn oath, like  _friends_ and the scrape is bright against her skin, as bright as her eyes have always been. You can almost taste her life seeping out as she leaves you. Something in you shudders and strains, and if this moment had a sound it would be creaking wood, pushed to breaking point. If it had a taste, well, that taste would be bloody.

********

There is the tang of salt and something sharper in the air, the day she comes home to you. She swoops back into your life like a myth, like something ethereal, a prophet a messiah  _a savior_. She is back and she is home and she is saving you, all of you. You have death at your heels again and there are bits of someone less fortunate, hopes and dreams and fears caught up between your bared teeth as you grin at her, share with her this moment of joy and of triumph. She is home. (In the dark, in your dreams that night she kisses you and you taste blood at her mouth, wake up craving the tang of metal).

********

Her betrayal breaks something in you. Something snaps. You worry your lip to bleeding as you run with her, long strides, as she gives you her gun, knees on hard earth, and you are far away because being here is too close, too painful.

You miss her already, despite her deception.

********

She was good, after all.

Your tears are salt-relief.

********

She saves you.

She saves you.

She saves you. 

(You can’t return the favor)

Her hand is still warm where you touch it, where your fingers wrap hers, where your lips touch her knuckles and you must be imagining it because Paula would never have let you get near her if her knuckles had been torn, bleeding like a kid in one too many playground fights.

It’s impossible.

You taste the blood anyways.

*****

It’s the goddamn apocalypse, and  _blood_  reminds you of her.


End file.
